Americans say they will travel more than they were saying they'd travel a few months ago, but that doesn't necessarily mean a return to the carefree, charge-now-and-worry-later mentality of the carefree days of, oh, a year or so ago. "Indeed, spending cuts are a recurrent theme of polling data on consumers' summer-travel intentions," reports Mark Dolliver, who takes a look at a couple of surveys and talks to several industry analysts. Realizing the predicament that it's in, the industry has already responded with deep discounts, of course. "People in the travel industry read the polls, too," observes …

Ariel Horn has opened up his small Manhattan ad agency, The Horn Corp., to anyone in the industry who's looking for work. They come with their laptops and send out resumes, Jim Zarroli reports. But Horn also encourages them to brainstorm with him on new business possibilities. If a company likes one of the ideas, Horn hires the person who came up with it, paying by the project. The innovative business model means that the agency functions like a much bigger company than it really is. "[We] use the power of the people we have here," Horn says. …

Timothy Geithner, secretary of the Treasury, and Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, lay out the Obama administration's plans for financial regulation reform in this op-ed piece. Among the four points: "Building on the recent measures taken to fight predatory lending and unfair practices in the credit card industry, the administration will offer a stronger framework for consumer and investor protection across the board.

As long as it isn't something like "Glaring Mistake," the headline declares.

Bob McDonald, Procter & Gamble's new CEO, plans to grow the company's beauty division both horizontally and vertically, and the industry is applauding the strategy, Andrea Nagel and Molly Prior write. Under A.J. Lafley's stewardship, P&G grew beauty, personal care and grooming to $28 billion in 2008, up from $9 billion in 2003, and its commitment to the segment has been continually underscored this week. Ed Shirley, P&G's highly competitive vice chair of Global Beauty and Grooming, told investors at a conference in Paris that 16 of the firm's top 43 brands are in the beauty and grooming portfolio, and …

Dovetailing nicely with P&G's new emphasis, CVS and Walgreens, the nation's largest drugstore chains, are redesigning their beauty departments in an effort to convince consumers that they can pamper themselves and spend far less than they would at a department store cosmetics counter. CVS Caremark is open modern, spa-like beauty boutiques that are attached to its drugstores by a breezeway, Sandra M. Jones reports, while Walgreen is redesigning beauty departments in some locations such as its new Times Square store in New York. CVS opened its first 3,000-square-foot Beauty 360 boutique in Washington, D.C., in November, and has …

The Obama administration next week plans to propose a new agency with broad authority to protect consumers of financial products such as mortgage loans and credit cards and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, says he will support the move, Binyamin Appelbaum reports. He had previously withheld judgment. Consumer advocates and many members of Congress have said the Federal Reserve failure to enforce existing laws was a key cause of the financial crisis because firms could sell products that consumers could not afford. The proposed legislation would shift regulatory authority to the agency. …